Trump’s tariffs are still really, really bad

A rude awakening at Davos and in the aisles of a Canadian liquor store

Over the holiday break, I trekked north of the border to visit friends in Montreal. As we shopped for New Year’s Eve supplies, I noticed a disturbing trend — not a single bottle of American alcohol was on the shelves. No Bacardi, no Jack Daniel’s, no Barefoot Wine. Bruce Springsteen may have been playing on the radio, but American cultural hegemony stopped at the speakers. “Oh yeah, it’s because of the tariffs,” my Canadian counterpart reminded me.

Of course I remembered Canadians rallying around the Maple Leaf Flag and electing Mark Carney as a rebuke of the Trump administration’s trade policies. But amidst the onslaught of egregious activities from the Trump administration over the course of 2025, the tariffs that had been lurking in the back of my mind suddenly came back into full focus when I saw the repercussions with my own eyes.

Now, after Mark Carney’s stirring speech at Davos — and Trump’s latest threats in his relentless pursuit of Greenland — tariffs are once again the talk of the town. But unlike last year, Democrats can’t afford to squander an opportunity to drive home a message about Trump’s economic disaster.

Let’s go back to April 2025, when Trump made his “Liberation Day” tariff announcement in the Rose Garden. Looking at how public opinion moved in the months that followed, it’s clear that the tariffs were a major catalyst in voters swaying against the president. Tariffs broke through in a real way to voters, significantly more so than other major news stories at the time like DOGE or “Signal-gate” (remember that?) But as the year dragged on, the initial shock and awe of the tariff announcement subsided as Trump turned his focus to other matters at home and abroad.

Now, Trump is turning his Eye of Sauron once again to tariffs, and American businesses and consumers will pay the price. New research from the Yale Budget Lab finds that Trump’s latest proposal would cause the average family to lose over a thousand dollars at a time when Americans are loudly telling the Trump Administration that they’re failing to address their number one issue, high prices.

Trump may already have walked back the Greenland tariffs, but it’s hard to see this story ending well. Wall Street and corporate America largely gritted their teeth last year as Trump vacillated and retreated, with an all-out economic crash failing to materialize as some had predicted after “Liberation Day.” But that’s starting to change.

Earlier this week, the Dow dropped over 850 points after Trump’s latest tariff threats. And after nearly a year of new tariffs and even greater uncertainty, American businesses are starting to face serious repercussions. In December, Jim Beam announced that they’re ceasing bourbon production for a year, citing depressed global demand due to tariffs as a factor. Just as the Canadians did last year, the Europeans are now starting to boycott US products in solidarity with Denmark. If Mark Carney’s stinging declaration at Davos about the end of the old world order is any indication, the rest of the world is going to move on without us. In fact, at Davos, Carney announced that Canada will be importing 50,000 Chinese electric vehicles and forming a new strategic partnership with Qatar.

Trump knows that his tariffs are deeply unpopular, even among his own supporters. But his tendency to be somewhat sensitive to public opinion is now crashing against his quixotic quest to bully our global allies into relinquishing possession of Greenland. The administration has indicated even a Supreme Court decision won’t stop it from enacting its punishing “America First” trade and geopolitics regime.

So what are the Democrats to do? Last year, their grand response to tariffs was…”TACO”, or “Trump Always Chickens Out.” Some Democrats even lauded the tariffs in an attempt to reach Trump’s working class voters. But the reality is that voters really care about high prices — and they’re starting to punish Trump for it. A new New York Times-Siena College poll finds that voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the cost of living by a 30-point margin, with disapproval extending across age, gender, race, and education levels.

So, this time around, I’m asking Democrats to do two things: Don’t lose sight of Trump’s economic trainwreck despite everything else he is doing, and just tell the voters the simple truth, which is that Trump’s tariffs are causing you to lose money. It’s now a midterm election year, and Democrats can’t afford to take their eye off pummeling Trump on voters’ number one issue. In the meantime, maybe end Dry January a little early to pour one out for our American beverage producers — it’s your patriotic duty.

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